Dad Memorial Trip, Day 1: Leaving Los Angeles in the Broad Daylight

July 16, 2024

The run up to this epic trip in Dad’s Bus was fraught. LA was hot, I was stressed getting ready for the memorial and battling depression and of course there were all the “we are about to leave on a very long trip in a very old car” worries. Working on prayer flags for Dad with old photos and his scrapbooks was emotional for me. Just curating his lists—a man who loved lists and had lists of lists and would sometimes call to say, “Just wanted to call because it is on the list” or “I made a great list today!”—well, these activities brought Dad back in strange and sad ways. I started to dream about him, and in my dreams he was alive, as if his death had been some terrible, other dream, so when I woke I felt like he would still be there, only to realize that no, Dad was still dead.

Leaving LA was like leaving LA always is: traffic on the 10, the sweet release of PCH, traffic jam aside, but tinged with more sadness because we were leaving Harold the dog behind. In fact, the morning we left Harold was the Saddest Dog on Earth, and the night before we left he made a pretty good attempt at eating an air conditioner. We knew there was no way we could bring Harold to the memorial, and we knew our dear friend Nancy would take good care of him, but oh, those big, brown eyes.

The PCH construction traffic jam in Malibu gave me plenty of time to think as we slowly rolled North. I was mostly thinking about my stomach. My emotions and my guts are intimately connected, much like my father’s were, and the worry was roiling and twisting, causing even more stress about my stomach.

We did all our usual stuff, stopping in Trancas (hipster grocery in Malibu) for Robert’s beloved Toffee Chocolate Chip cookies, missing Harold who loves Trancas so, and we were of course stuck in traffic in Santa Barbara, where they have been working on the freeway since I was a student at UCSB in the late 80’s, but then we hit the highway, the golden hills on one side and the sparkling blue Pacific on the other, rolling up and down the hills in the Van, just like a trip with my Dad.

We had decided on Buellton as our goal for night one as we had a late start, but I also wanted to stay at Pea Soup Andersen’s because of my father. When I was a child my father would drive us south from Ashland, Oregon every summer, and we would often stay at the Andersen’s in Santa Nella before proceeding to Reedley or Clovis. Once in awhile we would stay in the motel, but more often we’d roll in at night, park the Bus, and sleep in the back. In the morning, we would go into the restaurant and have breakfast. On a trip north this fall to see dad after his fall, we (Robert and I) actually tried to stay at the Santa Nella Andersen’s, but they were booked with some kind of convention. I also remembered stopping at the Buellton Andersen’s for Pea Soup with my Dad when I graduated from college and he drove me to San Francisco to start my new life, so I wanted to make this the first stop on the memorial Dad trip.

However, I was a little concerned, because when I had made the motel bookings the internet was saying Andersen’s was closed, so I worried I might have booked a room in some sort of wormhole motel outside of space and time, but of course the motel is still there; it is the restaurant that is closed. Andersen’s is a funky place, but clean and comfortable, and the old restaurant is a trip.

I love haunted and abandoned places, and we enjoyed taking pictures in the morning and at night. In fact, in the morning I went online to learn more, and I loved that the man who started the place had been the head chef at the Biltmore in LA, a place I know well from teaching Literary Los Angeles, and that they originally called it the “Buell-more,” and I loved learning that it was his wife’s French split pea soup that made the place famous –link at bottom and Robert and jenny photos from the place in the morning!

That first night in Buellton we went to a lovely Mexican place called Tequila for some pretty fancy Mexican food, and we loved the fog rolling in from the ocean. In fact, I had never been in Buellton when it was anything but HOT, so this was a lovely respite before we collapsed into bed, not quite ready for the days ahead.

Images below=cool shots from Buellton and Andersen’s and links for more Andersen’s info: